Manipulating flora: Seventeenth-century botanical practices and natural philosophy. Introduction

The study of plants and vegetal bodies has always played an essential role in the knowledge of nature for both theoretical and practical purposes. Since the Middle Ages, the practical perspective had prevailed, as the study of vegetation lacked disciplinary autonomy and was primarily an aspect of medical training. Plants were mainly subject to medicinal or pharmacological uses, although a great variety of topics, such as the naturalistic study of plants, the building of gardens, or the symbolical approach to flora, reflected a more comprehensive attention to the vegetal world.1 Scholars interested in plants generally worked with Dioscorides’ Materia medica, Galen’s De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus, and Pliny’s Naturalis historia, and learned the uses and properties of medicinal herbs. When Theophrastus’ De causis plantarum, which contained a more theoretical interpretation of plants, was rediscovered and brought back to Europe from Constantinople, this work attracted less attention than materia medica, and this testified to the medical predilection for the study of plants.